PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden has been charged with murder over a 2006 surgery he performed, his lawyer said Friday, raising new doubts whether the physician will regain his freedom.

Shakil Afridi already is being held in prison pending retrial on a separate charge, despite U.S. officials demanding he be released. The case has caused friction between Pakistan and the U.S., complicating a relationship that Washington views as vital for fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as negotiating an end to the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The murder charge stems from a complaint over a teenage boy who died after Afridi performed surgery on him for appendicitis in 2006.

The complaint, filed by the deceased teenage boy's mother, Nasib Gula, says Afridi was not authorized to operate on her son because he was a physician, not a surgeon, said the doctor's lawyer, Samiullah Afridi. The boy died from complications following the surgery, which took place in Pakistan's remote Khyber tribal area, the lawyer said.

The lawyer, who is not related to his client, said the case had no merit because too much time had passed since the incident. The trial has been scheduled for mid-December, he said.

The doctor is currently being held in prison. He was convicted of "conspiring against the state" in May 2012 and sentenced to 33 years in prison. His conviction was related to allegations that he gave money and provided medical treatment to Islamic militants in Khyber, not for helping the CIA track down bin Laden. The doctor's family and the militants denied the allegations.

A senior judicial officer overturned the prison sentence and ordered his re-trial in August, saying the person who sentenced the doctor was not authorized to hear the case.In the U.S. and other Western nations, Afridi was viewed as a hero who had helped eliminate the world's most wanted man. The doctor ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA in an attempt to verify the al-Qaida leader's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad. U.S. commandos later killed bin Laden there in May 2011 in a unilateral raid.

Pakistani officials were outraged by the bin Laden operation, which led to international suspicion that they had been harbouring al-Qaida's founder. In their eyes, Afridi was a traitor who had collaborated with a foreign spy agency in an illegal operation on Pakistani soil.

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" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan

More charges are being leveled against the hero doctor who helped the CIA pinpoint Usama bin Laden in what appears to be a strategy to ensure he remains behind bars even if the sham case accusing him of colluding with terrorists is overturned.

Afridi was charged with murder last week for a six-year-old case in which he tried to save a young boy stricken with appendicitis. Now, just days before a tribunal hearing at which he could win a retrial in the case that landed him a 33-year prison sentence, his lawyers have learned that a raft of new charges await.

“It seems the prosecution and evidence is so weak, they have to frame him to keep [Afridi] in jail, fearing an acquittal," said Qamar Nadeem, a lawyer and cousin of the jailed doctor.More...

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" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan

A jail sentence handed down to the doctor alleged to have helped the US track down Osama Bin Laden in 2011 has been reduced by 10 years by a Pakistani court.

Shakil Afridi is accused by Pakistan of running a fake vaccination programme to help confirm Bin Laden's presence in the northern town of Abbottabad.

His original 33-year term on an unrelated charge was widely seen as punishment for his alleged role.

Bin Laden was killed in a US raid.

The raid was acutely embarrassing for Pakistan, which was not informed in advance, and the episode plunged relations with Washington to a new low.

A tribal areas court convicted Afridi in May 2012 of treason on charges of links to a militant group.

A court in the city of Peshawar cut his sentence on Saturday to 23 years following appeals from his relatives and the US.

Afridi's lawyer, Qamar Nadeem, said the conviction was upheld, but another charge, that of waging war with Pakistan, had been dropped.

Mr Nadeem raised the possibility of a further appeal to a higher tribal court as relatives are demanding a fresh trial, as ordered by officials last August.

Afridi is said to have helped the CIA by setting up a sham hepatitis vaccination programme to pinpoint Bin Laden's compound. Through his lawyers, he has denied assisting the CIA.

The BBC's Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says Afridi's case has carried undertones of realpolitik from the start and few people believed in the credibility of the conviction for collaborating with a banned militant group.

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" Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." - Daniel Moynihan